Turkey Abruptly Closes Espionage Trial of 2 Journalists to Public

From left, Can Dundar, the top editor at Cumhuriyet, a Turkish daily, and Erdem Gul, its Ankara editor, arrived at a courthouse Friday in Istanbul for their trial on espionage charges.Credit
Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISTANBUL — A long-awaited trial of two Turkish journalists facing potential life sentences on espionage charges began Friday, but was quickly closed to the public and news media, prompting outrage and concerns over whether the proceedings could be free and fair. A subsequent postponement, until April 1, did little to stanch the criticism.

The espionage charges are based on reporting by the journalists on weapons shipments by the country’s spy agency to Syrian rebels opposed to the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Both the charges, which press organizations have denounced as baseless, and the decision to move the trial behind closed doors were criticized by Turkish journalists, anti-government activists and foreign governments. They see the closing of the trial as a vivid demonstration of a tilt toward authoritarian rule by the government of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The government said it was closing the proceedings to protect state secrets, a claim that was dismissed by the hundreds of journalists, politicians, diplomats and activists packed into the courtroom for what they believed would be a public trial. When told that they would have to leave, they erupted in anti-government chants.

“You are all dogs of Tayyip, shame on you!” one woman shouted, referring to Mr. Erdogan, who personally filed the criminal complaint against the journalists and was accepted on Friday by the judge as a co-plaintiff in the case.

The defendants in the case are Can Dundar, the editor in chief of the newspaper Cumhuriyet, one of the country’s last voices of opposition, and Erdem Gul, the newspaper’s bureau chief in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. Their report on the weapons shipments, published in May, merely detailed a practice that critics of the government said was widely known, given that Turkey openly supports the anti-Assad rebel groups.

The journalists were arrested in November and spent 92 days in jail, some of them in solitary confinement, before Turkey’s highest court ordered their release in late February.

Turkey and Mr. Erdogan have been heavily criticized in recent years for a crackdown on freedom of expression. Dozens of journalists and columnists critical of the government have lost their jobs, while the authorities, backed by court orders, have seized two opposition media companies. More than 1,800 cases charging insults aimed at Mr. Erdogan, a crime under Turkish law, have been filed.

But even in this environment the case against Mr. Dundar and Mr. Gul stands out, as it sits at the confluence of many issues causing turmoil in modern Turkey: pressure on the media, Turkey’s role in the war in Syria and the erosion of the independence of the country’s judicial system.

The trial also intersects with another fault line in Turkish politics, the long-running battle between Mr. Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen. The government has also accused the two journalists of collaborating with Mr. Gulen, an exiled Muslim cleric who was once an ally of Mr. Erdogan but is now an avowed enemy who has been accused by the government of plotting a coup in Turkey.

The feud has led the government to conduct purges of the police and judiciary — institutions believed to be staffed by the cleric’s supporters — and the seizure of businesses and media outlets associated with him.

The case has garnered significant attention abroad, with rights groups and foreign governments highlighting the trial as a particularly stark example of the growing pressures on the Turkish news media.

Human Rights Watch, in a report published Friday, said the case was “putting journalism itself on trial and is one of the most flawed prosecutions in Turkey in recent times.” PEN International, a group based in London that supports freedom of expression, wrote in an open letter to Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, that Mr. Dundar and Mr. Gul “are facing life in prison simply for carrying out their legitimate work as journalists.”

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Several diplomats attended the opening of the trial, lending their support. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Mr. Dundar’s wife and son in Istanbul in January, while Mr. Dundar was still in jail.

On Friday, outside the courthouse, Nina Ognianova, the program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said she had little confidence that the trial would be fair, given that it would be conducted away from the public spotlight.

“The trial must be reopened to the media and the public, and Turkey’s government must not be allowed to intervene in the proceedings,” she said, shortly after being ushered out of the courtroom.

Mr. Erdogan, who frequently labels his critics as traitors, has suggested that Cumhuriyet’s coverage on the weapons shipments is part of a plan to undermine Turkey. He has said Mr. Dundar will “pay a heavy price” for his paper’s reporting. And when Turkey’s Constitutional Court, which experts say is one of the few government institutions here that still operates independently, ordered the journalists’ release in February, Mr. Erdogan rejected the decision.

“I want to make that clear,” he said. “I don’t obey or respect the decision.” The men remained free, however.

In comments recently after several terrorist attacks in Turkey, some attributed to Kurdish militants and others to the extremists of the Islamic State, Mr. Erdogan has said the government should widen the definition of who is a terrorist to possibly include journalists and academics.

He said there should be no distinction between “a terrorist holding a gun or a bomb and those who use their position and pen to serve the aims” of terrorism.

Before Friday’s trial began, Mr. Dundar said he was hopeful that the criminal court judge would take his cues from the Constitutional Court’s ruling, which said the editors’ rights had been violated and that they were journalists, not terrorists.

“The Constitutional Court has already said that this news is not an act of terrorism but an act of journalism,” he said. “So this judge, we hope, will approve this decision and drop the case.”

But many gathered outside the courtroom were not as optimistic. “These men are up against the president, who has eroded the justice system in Turkey,” said Ipek Kurt, a former lawyer and activist attending the trial in support of the journalists. “It’s impossible to maintain hope in this environment, where power and institutions are under the rule of one man.”

Correction: March 25, 2016

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Ahmet Davutoglu. He is the prime minister of Turkey, not a member of PEN International.

Tim Arango contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on March 26, 2016, on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey Closes Journalists’ Espionage Trial to Public, Drawing More Criticism. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe